Anderson teens share gang experiences, difficulty of getting out

A suspected gang member shows gang signs to an officer of the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office.

Anderson County Sheriff’s Office courtesy photo

Jerry Mondrekus Mattison, 16, a Westside High student, died in June of last year as a result of gunfire at an Anderson apartment complex. Police suspect gang members were involved in the shooting.

ANDERSON COUNTY - Former students of Anderson County schools now attending the Anderson County Alternative School said gangs here are not social clubs. And they are beginning to recognize the need to get out of the gangs that some were forced into at a young age.

Chad has been associated with a gang since the age of 6 when his brother had him slap-boxed into the Folk Nation.

Slap-boxing is a form

of gang initiation involving members slapping prospective members.

Chad said he always will be a gang member; he can't leave it. But for now, he has "closed his books."

In gang terms, that means Chad — whose name, like that of the other student mentioned in this story, has been changed to protect his identity — is still a member of the gang but is no longer active.

"I will always be a member," he said. "I'm not active right now, but if I am called up and asked to do a mission, I have to do it. If I don't, they'll kill me."

The 16-year-old said he was once the leader of a set, or subgroup, of the Folk Nation in Anderson. Originally from Florida, Chad said he grew up as a member of the Folk in one of the roughest gang neighborhoods in south Florida.

One day after moving to Anderson County, he said, he started his set of a gang, recruiting members from T.L. Hanna High School in Anderson.

With close-cropped, black hair and olive skin, Chad is thin but muscular, with steel-blue eyes.

"Basically, most people join to find a family," he said. "I didn't really have a family. My dad beat the crap out of me every day. I wanted a family. I wanted money. I wanted respect. And I had it, until I got locked up."

Chad said he was caught in a stolen car in Florida and sat in jail for a week before the charges were dropped.

"It's like an addiction," he said, as he looked out the window of the Anderson County Alternative School. Chad was sent to the alternative school almost a year ago when he was expelled from T.L. Hanna for fighting.

"When you've done something for nearly 10 years, it's hard to just stop doing it," he said. "It's the adrenaline, man. You get high off it when you get into it… I've done junk here I'm surprised I haven't been arrested for."

The veins of his neck tense when he hears the word "frog," a term he said disrespects Folk members. He laughs when he talks about beating members of rival gangs or robbing drugstores at knifepoint.

"People say it's a bunch of kids hanging out getting into fights," he said. "But that's just some of these kids. They're not real gangs. When you're in a

real gang, you take it to your heart. And with a real gang there's only two ways out — you either end up in prison or dead."

Chad said he became an active member of the Folk in Florida when he was 12. His initiation was to walk by a line of 25 members who could do almost anything they wanted to him.

"They couldn't cut me or shoot me, but they could hit me with whatever they wanted to," he said. "If they wanted to hit you with a 2 x 4 or a tire iron, they could. If you fell down more than four times, they killed you.

"That was Florida," he said. "It's not like that here. It's not as rough."

But still, he said, there are gangs.

"I think about 45 percent of the kids in Anderson County are in gangs," he said. "About 35 percent of them are Bloods. Five percent are Crips, and 5 percent are Folk. The rest of them? They're a fake street gang. They're not tied up into a national like we are. Folk is directly out of Folk Nation out of Chicago."

Ruling his domain in school was part of his work as an OG, or leader.

"I was ‘jumping in' maybe four people a day," he said. ‘Jumping in' is a ritual in which a potential member is attacked by several gang members at once. Sometimes, jumping in is used to punish others.

"We used to take kids into the bathrooms and ask them their knowledge," he said. "That's how you tell if someone is false claiming. If he didn't have the knowledge, he'd get beat to within an inch of his life."

And gang membership doesn't stop just because the colors couldn't be worn in school, he said.

Chad said gang members hide their colors or gang signs, often the different-colored bandannas that signify the different gangs, when they go to school.

"First thing, we'd go into the bathroom and hide the colors," he said. "We tied them so they were flat on our legs. But as soon as school was out, we'd pull them back out and wear them on our heads or over our faces."

At football games, gang members wear their colors and start fights, he said.

But Chad wants out. He doesn't want the lifestyle anymore.

"When you first get in the gang, you love it," he said. "But it's a living hell when you get in. It ain't fun when you're doing stuff illegal and you got to watch over your shoulder all the time."

He says he was tired of being scared someone would break into his house or try to hurt his family.

For Felicia, a police officer and a bullet helped her decide to leave the Bloods.

"It was Jan. 26 (2009). I'll never forget that day," she said. "I got grazed by a bullet and a friend of mine got shot."

Felicia says she joined the gang when she was 14. An altercation on an Anderson School District 5 bus was her initiation.

Most girls, she said, were sexed in, but for her it was a fight. Being "sexed in," she said, required members to sleep with certain members of the gang or with a certain number of the members of a gang.

She used to play basketball, she said, but all that changed when she joined the gang. All that changed when she started getting in trouble.

"You're in trouble all the time once you're affiliated with a gang," she said.

Nights were filled with parties and fighting, she said. Days in school were filled with "beef," where one member has a problem with a rival gang member, and fighting, she said.

That January day started as a fight.

"This Shane and Robert they were there over at Eastside where some people were saying they were disrespected," she said. "And then Robert got jumped, and he ain't even a member, you know, he was just a friend."

The fight started with fists, she said, but then someone drew guns.

"They started shooting in the air," she said. "But then somebody started shooting at people. We all just ran. Everybody was running. Five of them had guns. One boy shot himself in the leg. Another boy got shot in the arm."

Now at the Alternative School, Felicia is a model student, counselors at the school say.

"There was one police officer, he told my sister and me that if we got out, he'd take us out to eat," she says. "We went to get counseling and got out. Everybody kept saying we'd end up in jail or said we'd get shot. I didn't believe it until then."

Now, she counsels her younger brother, who is 2 years old, to stay out of the gang.

"He says ‘I want to do that,' but I tell him, ‘It's not what you want to do,'" she said. "It messed up a lot for me."

Felicia hopes to return to school, play basketball again and go on to college.

"I was trying to be a follower, instead of thinking for myself," she said. "I just know now, it ain't the way you want to go."